The first thing you have to do is make your character. I picked to start in the action zone because the enemies there tend to be the easiest to start with in my experience. The enemies in the Action Zone are also the most deadly at higher levels, so forcing the map to generate them early game takes care of that problem.

For this strategy, I use the Jumpman build, placing all 5 stat points into endurance. The reason behind that is that your custom character is actually the only one that can appear in the game that specialises in jumping, which is a very useful build, because it's 100% accurate, costs little time and in turn can make tankier enemies panic by repeatedly jumping on them and causing mental damage, essentially stun-locking them, the only drawback being that the jumper can hit ceilings and damage themselves with other obstacles.

The ideal map setup would have the bosses in this order: Robot, Cyclops, Vampire and Slime. The robot obviously comes first because you start in the Action zone, but other than that, he's interchangeable with Cyclops. The important part is that Cyclops and Robot remain in the early game area, while Vampire and Slime remain the in late game area. This is because the Slime has by far the easiest enemies, with Explosteves as the only bomb-type enemy being basically one-use, who can be easily stopped dead in their tracks with a character reacting to them and leaving the blast zone, rendering their sacrifice worthless, and Anonymous Gunmen having slow and inaccurate cannons as the main range-type enemy. The Vampire also has slow-moving enemies because of the swampy land and low-powered ranged weapons, which makes them easy to take care of.

After getting the ideal map layout, your starter characters shouldn't matter too much as long as they're different. A ranged and melee hero should be enough to get you by until you recruit more characters. I suggest not starting out with a bomb character, since they're pretty bad early game, but you should still be able to manage.

When levelling up your characters, I typically level up their health twice, then their combat skill once on average, leaving the other skill to the late game, since they're not too important, except for mental, which I put a point or two into every now and then to make sure my heroes don't panic, especially in higher level zones, where they'll be taking more damage, both physical and mental.

Consumables are usually something I use very little, with the exception of water bottles and medkits, as well as food for my Jumpman. When you enter a town, prioritise medkits and maybe new weapons for your other heroes if you can afford them to give you an edge in battle. I play on Very Hard, so hotels aren't very useful, but if it's cheaper to let everyone sleep than to heal them with consumables, go for it.

Of course, the bosses are a very important aspect of this guide. Before tackling the boss castles, I usually have in my crew: One Melee, One Ranged, One Jumpman and One Thrower, the two last ones being the most important.

One thing I realised is that castles always generate similarly to the format below, at least for boss castles, which we can use to our advantage.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1657853220754567179/81F451DFB76ED92590FDCD89DC89FBFE27C4701F/?imw=256&&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

As seen in the image, the boss room is at the end of the corridor, which one could access using the tower rooms, bypassing some enemies along the way if you're sneaky enough. Once you reach the boss room, don't enter it yet. Take your thrower and jumpman to the side of the room, in front of the top-right tower room. Then, take your melee or ranged hero in front of the entrance to see the boss. Now, use your thrower to throw the brick blocks of the wall at the boss, who will not see them since they're behind a wall. Once the thrower runs out of time, use your jumpman to repeatedly jump on the boss. If they don't die by the time he runs of either time or endurance, finish them off with the melee and/or ranged hero.

If the boss is killed in one turn, you won't have to worry about the minions in the room, since they'll surrender, and if the boss doesn't die, he most likely won't attack, since he'll be fleeing from the mental damage caused by the jumpman's incessant jumping.

In the end, Enemy is still and RNG based game, and things won't always go your way. You heroes could die unexpectedly, your locations could be unfavourable, or you could not get any good loot. I just hope that my guide will have at least helped make going through the game a little easier, and hopefully, funner than dying all the time. Let me know what you think in the comments, I'm open to suggestions and feedback :)